New JSP volume includes Book of Commandments

An angry mob destroyed the press on which it was being printed in 1833, so the Book of Commandments — intended to be the second volume of scripture published in this gospel dispensation — was never completed.

Not until now, that is.

Mormon scholars' best estimation of what would have been included in the Book of Commandments is contained in the latest release of the massive Joseph Smith Papers project undertaken by the Church History Department.

The release of "Revelations and Translations, Volume Two: Published Revelations" was announced March 23 at the Church History Library in Salt Lake City.

(Please see "New volume of Joseph Smith Papers published" for coverage of the announcement.)

Along with the photo reproductions of each page of the first edition (1835) of the Doctrine and Covenants and related documents, the new volume presents an original copy of the incomplete Book of Commandments. But it doesn't stop there.

"We have, in our best judgment, finished the Book of Commandments," said Robin Scott Jensen, one of three editors of the new volume along with Richard E. Turley Jr. and Riley M. Lorimer.

To understand how that is possible requires some historical background.

Festering anti-Mormon sentiment in Independence, Mo., in 1833 culminated with events in July, when a mob surrounded the printing press of William W. Phelps, where he, Oliver Cowdery and Edward Partridge were at work on the Book of Commandments. The book was a compilation of revelations received up to that time by the Prophet Joseph Smith "for the government of the Church of Christ."

Vigilantes threw furniture into the street and scattered the type. They pushed the press from a second-story window. They would later give the press to publishers of the Upper Missouri Enquirer, a newspaper in Liberty, Mo.

Many members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are familiar with a painting depicting the heroic actions of two sisters, Mary Elizabeth and Caroline Rollins, ages 14 and 12, at the time of the destruction of the press. Evading the mobbers, they gathered up as many as they could of the unbound sheets from the Book of Commandments, then ran to a nearby cornfield to hide.

Other church members salvaged some of the sheets. Those people included a 20-year-old John Taylor, who reached between the logs of the print shop to gather some.